The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Stephen Wolfram answers viewer questions on neural nets, biotechnology, organ regeneration, cosmology, and more in an engaging unscripted livestream. Topics include the future of neural nets, crowdsourcing dynamics, biotechnology advancements, and using asteroids for shielding on space voyages.

Stephen Wolfram shares insights on balancing work and life, emphasizing walking for health and productivity. He discusses technology, relationships, retirement, and practical applications in AI. Exploring daily tasks and intellectual pursuits, summer school organization, and challenges of remote work and software engineering.

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Could the expansion of the universe affect biological evolution? - ​How much does the sky weigh? How much does the Earth weigh? - What would happen if gravity on Earth changed to that of the Moon? What if gravity suddenly got stronger? - So a full data memory card vs. a new, empty data memory card of the same kind: will there be a slight difference in weight due to the data filled? - Do insects (e.g. ants, mites, etc.)/bacteria have brains? Assuming they do, do they have emotions? Do they feel pain? If they (in the case of bacteria) don't have a brain, what governs their behaviors? - How was it discovered that caffeine could energize us? Is it all living things that experience these effects, or is it exclusive to humans? - If electronics have coils and the brain has coils, should we be more conscious of signals in the air? - Is there a reason for the food likes and dislikes that each person experiences? Can taste buds be tricked?

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: How did scientific disciplines originate and evolve through the centuries? - Do you think Apple's new VR headset will be much different than previous releases of other VR headsets? What do past releases of similar products predict? - VR kind of reminds me of video game systems. Your product may be fantastic, but if the content/software isn't up to snuff, it's probably going to fail. - These glasses and headsets need to be comfy and miniaturized to become suitable for everyday use. - What are use cases in education for these new headsets? - Perhaps AI can be used to translate existing educational material into VR-suitable content.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the future of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Do you think the latest electric car is worth buying these days? What is the future of cars? - With technology integration, would we be able to do away with having to sleep in the future? - As far as human evolution, do you believe the human race is still evolving or have we peaked as a species? What's next in the stage of human evolution? - Will we ever have technology that will allow us to learn while we sleep? - Noise seems to be almost inevitable when it comes to flying, do you think there's a way to solve it? - How do you optimize the sky for regular air travel to accommodate flying cars? It doesn't seem feasible to build roads and traffic lights in the sky. - What about the future of tunnels? We've got 2 options for 3-D travel space! - About flying cars... Flying is dangerous and requires more training and skill and safety than ground cars. - Flying cars would take up an incredible amount of energy. Do you think it's even feasible that they would replace ground transportation? - What kind of architecture would we need in order to build an AI that is as good at math as LLMs are at language? Do you think this will be a fundamentally different architecture than a neural network? If so, how do humans do math in any self-consistent way at all? - Does AI being an interface to books mean there will be more subject matter experts, or fewer of them? - Will technology carry us away from the human condition, or allow it to flourish? - What does the future of libraries look like? - Lots of libraries have eBook checkouts now. - The future of the library is the anti-library, more books collected than read. - Even with modern internet mass information available, I still greatly value my personal physical library, several thousand technical reference books, documentation and circuit diagrams for all manner of things. Much of which cannot be found online yet.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Aside from faster processing speeds, what are some other ways computers may be improved in the future? - Will we still use books in 5-10 years, or will they be replaced by chatting with an AI? - It's moving toward narrative-driven, AI-powered, procedural generated VR environments with metahuman characters interacting with AI speech and whisper.... Create me a film experience.... - Yeah, I can't read books on the computer beyond like two hundred pages–too much eye strain. - Are we close to imitating senses of smell and touch in VR? - I lost my sense of smell due to a brain injury in 2016. Is there any realistic way this could ever be fixed? - How much of biology is untapped? I'm in the biology/biotech/genetics/metabolics field and it feels like most researchers never leave the lab. - Do you think deep neural nets etc. can help us build models of the human perceptual systems with vision and audio? How do we solve the problem of getting accurate training data for subjective experiences? - Technology and science mean nothing until we can chat with our dogs and cats. Will this ever be possible? - Do you think it will be possible to transition a real, living person into VR or code? Or it will be just a "JPG of a person"? - Isn't it too early to assume that we can replace all parts of the brain with digital tech?

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: Do you think LLMs will give everyone something akin to a personal McKinsey consultant? - How much efficiency is lost by needing to explain things to a team vs. doing a whole design alone? - With schools ending for the year, what are some ways to continue teaching kids over the summer? Did your summer schedule ever change when your kids would get out of school for summer? - What do you think about machine learning libraries vs. books? Do you think there is a current infrastructure out there for people to make libraries and sell them to users? It's interesting to think about people buying machine learning libraries for their AIs instead of books for their engineers. - What are some simple mathematical tricks and shortcuts it would be good for kids to learn? This might make a useful blog post. Things like "For powers of 10, the little number is how many zeroes come after the 1" and "It's easy to get 10%, you just have to double it to get 20% or find half to get 5%". - If you created an AI emulator of yourself, what would the first three rules of its conduct be? If you could "prompt engineer" an assistant bot for yourself, what would be the first three/most important "rules" you'd tell it to follow? - I'm a software engineer with about eight years of professional experience. I'm interested in transitioning into the field of AI/machine learning. I found it quite difficult to find careers in the marketplace that don't require 5+ years of experience in AI/machine learning. Any advice on how best to make this transition? - Will prompt engineering becoming a legitimate field of study at some point, or is this mainly a trend due to the current systems? - What does it take up front for you to fully invest in a potential idea? Must there be a full proof of concept done prior, with rigorous testing? - Isn't it inherently unwise to seek out AI help, especially in a corporate setting, as it may lead to leakage of information? - Do you find that the key to bring a productive person involves structuring your mind in such a way that you tackle problems in projects? What advice would you have for the sporadic-minded individual?

Stephen Wolfram answers general questions from his viewers about science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Is it possible to create more universe? - Why does running my Waterpik interrupt Bluetooth connections? - In third grade, I had an argument with a teacher. She said, "Before humans had language, they thought just like us." I argued that couldn't be true–instead, language gave way to complex thoughts. Was I right? - Why do many medications have side effects? - Why do we yawn? Are yawns truly contagious? - Why do cats meow, why do dogs bark, why do birds chirp? - Why can't AI help us to analyze animal sounds? - Do photons run through antimatter? Does that make them matter? - Is chemistry really just physics? - Does brain size have any correlation to IQ? - Well, the hardware of the brain is an ongoing process, especially in childhood. Nurture, environmental, social and natural circumstances can cause changes in brain hardware. - Do bigger brains actually have more functional neurons, or are they just more spread out? - Would all whales speak the same whale language?

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about the history of science and technology as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-qa Questions include: Are the stars and constellations we see today the same that were seen by the ancient civilizations who first studied them? Do star positions ever change? - What do you make of the relationship between rhetoric and math? They are held in contradistinction, but I am thinking of the relation between rhetorical invention and Chaitin's idea of math-creativity. - What about sudden novas and comets? Sudden shifts in orbits? - Is the Moon moving away measurable compared to human history? As in, since humans started recording history, did the Moon appear to get 10% smaller or so? - How will history be able to correct the continuous conundrum of the accuracy of our forefathers' discoveries, inventions and ideas? Additionally, how can we as humans preserve this? - How did early civilizations explain supernovas? Did they understand it as a star exploding? How did they come to this conclusion? - "The stars are like the Sun, but far away." When said for the first time, this must have been crazy to hear for others. How often were ideas like these disregarded at first? How did researchers of this time convince society of their findings? - Is it possible that errors in translation have affected results of research? Are there any examples of this in history? - When was the first time anyone considered what the angle of our solar system's ecliptic is relative to the Milky Way's galactic plane? Apparently, the angle is about 60 degrees. - Why did science evolve so rapidly in the Western world? - What's there to say about alchemy in history? - Is that because ethical questions are fundamentally computationally irreducible questions? - How do you filter out the "good new" from the "bad new"? It's remarkable that old ideas stood the test of time.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: From a leadership standpoint, what are your best teachings on how to lead with purpose? What is your leadership style? - How do you handle making mistakes? - It is impressive to see you (in a livecoding session) pull open a 20-year-old Mathematica document to refer to an earlier idea that you had. How have you managed your massive inventory of Mathematica idea notebooks over 30+ years? (e.g. do you create standalone Mathematica notebooks or massive ones?)? - Have you seen other people learn to not need to "relax" and to continuously work, as you do? I am most satisfied when I'm being productive, but I find myself getting fatigued or losing focus at some point. How do you maintain your work ethic? - Could you share your personal experience with how your intelligence has evolved as you've aged, particularly in terms of recall? Specifically, can you describe what it feels like for you when you take a brief pause of 0.2-2 seconds to grasp a concept while discussing complex topics in communication or video presentations? - Do you have any advice for the new generation of college graduates entering the workforce? What's the best way to apply for jobs? How do you maintain those jobs for years to come? - Do you think we'll get to a point where AI is in charge of interviewing? How could this be beneficial? Or even harmful? - What is your advice on how to lead when you sincerely do know less about the subject than the people you're assigned to lead? - As a company that functions worldwide, do you find language barriers to be an issue? Can AI help eliminate these barriers with some sort of universal translator? - Are there any self-evaluation techniques that you would recommend for everyone? - I'm curious about your approach to digesting new content, especially in the context of a research paper. In circumstances where time is limited and reading everything is not feasible, how do you determine when it's worth pausing to explore a referenced citation in depth versus continuing the reading without fully understanding the citation? Could you share your strategies for efficient and selective reading? - How do I go about learning mathematical thinking? My school focuses on learning formulas and just solving questions in the age of computers. - What would you suggest for a self-taught programmer on the "trader" side who wants to get more knowledgeable on "computational thinking"–books, courses, topics, anything you could share as clues for making a personal curriculum would be great!